Our Kitchen Remodel: The New Floor Plan

When we started brainstorming about our kitchen, we were all over the place. I was impatient and would have been happy with the existing kitchen, but Chad had a bigger vision in mind. I liked both ideas — keeping it the same, or renovating — but I knew if we renovated, the project could very well last much longer than either of us would have expected. I was right.

After dozens of floor plan designs (literally) we eventually settled on one that we both loved. It consisted of a massive kitchen island, a 12-foot pantry wall, and knocking down three supporting walls, which in turn tripled the size of the kitchen. And let me tell you. When you triple the size of your kitchen, you’re tripling the time of the project as well, at minimum.

Here is the original floor plan:

(And if you’re wondering, the software we used was a basic online cad program called floorplanner.com. We upgraded to the paid version and it was no-doubt a life saver.)

BEFORE:

Here is the 3-D version of the above floor plan:

And another angle in 3-D:

For a 3,500 SF house, it was far too small. In making the decision of remodeling, we thought about things like our growing family, entertaining, and most of all, resale value. And for this size of a home, a kitchen this small wasn’t going to cut it. With all the other renovations we were doing, we anticipate a certain list price for this home, and this small of a kitchen wouldn’t allow for that potential list price.

After months of back and forth, we ultimately decided on our new floor plan.

AFTER:

And here is the 3-D version of the new floor plan:

More of a bird’s eye view:

And some close-ups:

In order to achieve this new plan, we had to knock down three supporting walls and tear out our second back stairwell. When we bought the home, I loved the fact that it had two stairwells. But after some investigating, we realized this most likely wasn’t an original stairwell by any means. At one point our house was a duplex, so we presumed this was added then. It was extremely unsafe and not anything we wanted our kiddos potentially falling down. Or us falling down! By ripping it out, we were able to open up the entire space. We took the kitchen from four broken up, small rooms, to one large, massive space.

Here is a good side by side:
The pink highlighted area is the old kitchen versus the new kitchen. Pretty big difference, huh?

So what do you think? Are we crazy, or genius’? I’d say a little bit of both for sure. Some of the walls we knocked down were 100% brick. And not new brick. 100 year-old brick. That stuff was solid, let me tell you. It took them more than double the estimated time to demo because of those 10-inch-thick walls. So yeah, we were crazy in that respect. But look at the difference! We went from a tiny closed-in kitchen to a massive, open-concept kitchen.

About The Blissful Bee

Thank you for stopping by The Blissful Bee! I'm Amy and I'm the writer and designer behind the blog. I have a passion for interior design, fashion and simply living a stylish life. I hope you enjoy your "stay"!
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